Data Analytics at AEC

Data is useful, but not a savior. We simply must invest in Data Analytics at AEC, and perhaps artificial intelligence tools to predict repowering scenarios after an outage like the recent one (August 7, 2023). When our power went out, we did not have power for 28 hours. Considering the damage to our neighborhood, I thought that was not bad at all, and congratulations go out to the crews that got the power back on quickly. Weather happens, and catastrophic power outages are a fact of life.

But there are other things that cause power outages. For example, transformer failures, excessive demand for power (causing the voltage to sag, or drop, locally), a wayward squirrel, or an automobile accident involving a telephone pole can all cause local outages. After an outage, the system must be configured to isolate the outage to the fewest people possible. Sometimes you will notice that as a “blink” or instantaneous outage of your power as circuits are re-routed automatically to try to keep power on to the largest number of people. Blinks can be an issue and are more common than you think. All Cooperatives want to minimize the number of blinks recorded in each month.

So what data is collected and how is it collected? Well, automatic metering systems use an AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure), which is a communication system providing real time, on-demand data interrogations with your electric meter.

AMI systems collect parameters such as: Cumulative kWh usage, Daily kWh usage, Peak kW demand, Last interval demand, Load profile, Voltage, Voltage profile, Logs of voltage sag and swell events, Voltage event flags, Phase information, Outage counts, Outage logs, Tamper notification, Power factor, and Time-of-Use kWh and Peak kW readings.

AMI systems provide most of this information in real-time and on-demand, which improves operations. We need to collect and use this information to better serve the members of AEC.